Baseball has long been one of America's most popular sports and since its inception, it has gradually caught worldwide attention and acceptance. For instance, baseball has been received in Canada, Japan, Taiwan, South America, and Europe, and is now included as an Olympic sport. Moreover, while the sport of baseball has spanned other continents, it has become an integral part of American family life from little league teams to professional organizations.
Children first learn about baseball from visiting ballparks, watching television, and participating in organized leagues. It fosters dreams of future recognition in almost every youngster, and for those kids fortunate enough to acquire the requisite skills, baseball has provided an avenue for obtaining scholarships in higher education, escaping the streets, and reaching prosperity. Among the skills necessary to succeed in baseball are catching ground balls, line drives, and pop flies, batting, and throwing. The more batting, throwing, and catching techniques are practiced, the more developed a child's skills become. Hence, the sooner a child is given the opportunity to develop and perfect these baseball skills, the greater the young athlete's chances of succeeding in the sport as an adolescent and an adult.
Ideally, a ball throwing machine should provide a player with a tireless partner that supplies balls as desired at a selected trajectory so that the player can develop or improve his hand-eye coordination. Amateur coaches in youth leagues often find it difficult to properly instruct youngsters because of the limited resources and/or man-power available per team. Typically, one baseball coach is required to singly provide both batting practice and fielding practice to 10-20 players. This may become physically challenging for the coach, and often results in wasted time and player boredom. For some coaches, the inability to bat or pitch may create a virtually insurmountable obstacle to properly instructing the players in the art of hitting and fielding a baseball.
Pitching machines are among the most widely used devices for training, however, they generally are only available to older children, adolescents, and adults. Furthermore, existing pitching means merely concentrate on developing a player's batting skills rather than the tripartite skills of throwing, catching, and hitting. Since these techniques take years to develop, a device which affords children the opportunity to practice these skills early in life would be extremely useful and beneficial. Therefore, there exists a need for a machine capable of training young children to field grounders, line drives, and pop flies, as well as hitting pitched balls, and to throw at a designated target.